Posts Tagged ‘
hazard level ’

Safety inspection is a regular safety job that is purposed to ensure that equipments, tools, work conditions, work area, plant facilities and so on have already met minimum safety requirements. It is carried out in order to detect any safety deficiencies as early as possible so that accident can be avoided.

Generally, safety inspection checklist can be obtained from equipment manuals, operation manuals, safety standards, expert advises and experiences. Ideally, you have all the required checklists. However, some of you may not know what kinds of safety inspection checklists are required in your plant site.

Machine safety guards are hazard controls against machines hazards. Machine-related hazards can be appeared during machine installation, operation and maintenance. Machine safety guards are designed to prevent human injury and death as well as equipment damages from these hazards.

Ideally, machine safety guards should be able to eliminate potential hazards from the machine. Otherwise, another hazard control method has to be applied to reduce the hazard level into an accepted level. Selection of hazard control methods should always be referred to hazard control hierarchy.

Machine safety guards are usually designed by the machine’s manufacturer. And the safety precaution related with machine installation, operation and maintenance are mentioned in manufacturer’s manual. However, there may be some potential hazards that appear after the machine installed at plant site, which have not been included in the safety manual. (more…)

Before starting any construction work in chemical plant, you will want to conduct construction safety meeting which is attended by safety in charges within your company or plant, construction workers and labors. Construction safety meeting is usually conducted daily, weekly and or monthly within the construction schedule.

At that time, you should choose appropriate construction safety meeting topics. Construction safety meetings are very important in which you communicate any safety-related topics with the construction jobs.

Below here are 26 ideas for construction safety meeting topics that you can choose for the construction safety meetings in the plant site. Selection of the topics will depend on hazard level of each construction work that you have assessed through the hazard identification and risk assessment. (more…)

The Most Common Potential Hazards in Chemical Industries

If we talk about potential hazards in chemical industries, there will be long discussion about that matter. Although one chemical plant has similar nature with one another, but each plant comes with its unique hazards.

As a reminder, I recommend you to read my previous article about hazard identification study as well as hazard control methods if you have never experienced in making hazard list for your plant. (more…)

It has passed 25 years since Bhopal gas tragedy happened. Methyl isocyanate was released into the air and caused thousands of people died in Bhopal, India. Bhopal gas tragedy is one of the most serious chemical plant accidents in this century. (more…)

In the previous post, we had talked about hazard control hierarchy. Now we are going to talk about each hazard control method in more detail and show up examples of their implementation.

Hazard Elimination

Hazard elimination is the process of removing the hazards completely from the workplaces. The hazards are not present anymore. That’s why hazard elimination is the most effective method in controlling hazard. Whenever possible use this method to control hazards.

An example of hazard elimination is to design a low-temperature and pressure reaction conditions instead of the high-temperature and pressure condition. High temperature hazard is completely removed and over-pressure condition will no longer exist.

Another example of this is using automatic mode operation rather than manual operation. So that hazards that are associated with manual operation removed to zero level. Elimination of hazards is usually performed at the design or preparation phase and implemented at the source of hazards.

Hazard Reduction

Hazard reduction is the effort to reduce or lessen hazard level from the workplaces to an acceptable level. In this case hazards are still present. It is generally chosen whenever hazard elimination is not feasible.

Hazard reduction is implemented during the design phase and in some cases as a result of evaluation on the existing equipments, jobs, tasks or activities. An example of this is to substitute a hazardous chemical with a less hazardous chemical.

Engineering Control

Including in engineering control are isolation, ventilation, containment and process control. Engineering control deals with the design of workplaces and their related processes.

Isolation of the hazards may come in the form of machine guard, blast shield, welding curtains and hot surface insulation. Exhaust fan that removes catalyst dust and hazardous chemical vapor from a building are examples of hazard control by ventilation, where at the same adds fresh air into that building. Another example of ventilation is fume hood inside the laboratory room.

In case of containment, hazards are enclosed by using enclosed cabs, enclosing noisy equipment, providing a noise-insulated work booth and installation of silencer at the discharge pipe of a compressor.

Process control is the most common hazard control method in chemical plant operation, such as isolation by interlock and safety valve to prevent over pressure.

Administrative control

Administrative control is selected when elimination and substitution is not feasible, and engineering control could not provide adequate control on hazards. Typical examples of administrative controls are provisions of operation procedures, safety signs, safety talks, setting up new safety policies, scheduling working hour to limit exposure to the hazard, implementing job rotation, work permits, alarms and training.

Personal protective equipment shall be used when hazard elimination, reduction and engineering control are not feasible, and the administrative control could not provide sufficient additional safety protection.

The above hazard control methods can be applied in combination one with another in order to provide the most effective hazard control.